Autonomy introduces legal social media search

Even sarcasm no longer under the radar

It has been a busy Monday morning for search and discovery software firm Autonomy, with a number of announcements finding their way onto the web.

Firstly, it announced capabilities for identifying, preserving and collecting social media for e-Discovery. With the increasing usage of social media, the technology allows firms to comply with new regulations, like the Civil Procedure Rules in the UK or the equivalent in the US, that requires legal firms to have access to social for recovery of information.

This means that social media data must be managed in the same way as other enterprise data sources, with legal teams being prepared to search for, identify, preserve, and collect this form of information.

It is noted by Autonomy that there are inherent problems in searching social media data, due the conversational nature meaning that jargon, slang, and emotional undertones such as sarcasm make it difficult to for keyword spotting to fully comprehend what effect the language has.

"Autonomy has over a decade of experience in providing advanced technology to the world's leading government intelligence organizations to help them decipher the meaning of messages for homeland security, and this same technology is now being used to govern and conduct discovery on social media," said Mike Sullivan, CEO of Autonomy Protect.

"Our work with intelligence agencies has been a great proving ground, as those communications are often short, cryptic bursts, similar to social media, which only our meaning-based technology can understand. Just as we have incorporated audio, video, email, and other data types into our eDiscovery offering, we are now adding social media as another data type that we can process."

Next on the list for Autonomy is what it has called the Autonomy Chaining Console, essentially software that allows a clear overview of data for corporate legal departments, what it claims is a comprehensive tracking of cases from start to finish.

This is touted as highly useful to your average corporation, up to its eyeballs in litigation, potentially managing hundreds of cases being dealt with by dozens of law firms.

The new ‘virtual chain’ from Autonomy means that there are no longer any risky hand-offs of data with unnecessary importing, exporting and transferring of data which can risk losing data, and therefore incur penalties from the courts.

"The Autonomy Chaining Console provides visibility into complex litigation through a single interface," said Sullivan. "By automating defensibility, our customers benefit from the use of a common end-to-end eDiscovery platform that maintains chain of custody while working with dozens of law firms across hundreds of simultaneous cases."

Autonomy has also announced that it has released what it believes is the most comprehensive cloud-based Information Management platform for the legal market.

The technology allows for the firm's Intelligent Data Operating Layer to deliver multiple information management modules from a single platform.

The cloud based information management system uses what it claims to be the world’s largest private cloud with over 17 petabytes of data, allowing inside and outside counsel, as well as collaboration, removing the need for multiple copies of content and those risky information hand offs.

This means, among other things, that tighter security and lower cost of ownership is more easily achievable with Autonomy’s new cloud applications, says Autonomy..